Print Media Likes the Green Angle

 

By buildingctgreen.com staff

 

As if the media wasn’t awash with green building and green business stories already, a new study (pdf) released this week reveals that green business stories in the news are up this year compared to last year and we’ve only seen the beginning. According to the findings readers and advertisers want to see more green stories and editors across the country are more than willing to meet their demands.

 

Editors surveyed by the Donald W. Reynolds National Center for Business Journalism the Walter Cronkite School of Journalism and Mass Communication at Arizona State University, believed that green business stories have soared in the past year and the trend is yet to peak. Editors believed this was due in large part to the internet.

 

The study also looked at the number of green business stories published in the top-10 US newspapers and found that the number published in 2007 was already double that for last year. Examination of the content also determined that 81 of 154 business stories on environmental sustainability appearing since 2000 had been published during 2007.

 

- their writers needed better training on corporate sustainability issues;
- a fundamental shift was occurring in newsrooms across the country; and that green business stories were rising as priority news stories based on advertisers and consumers being greenstruck.
- the growing green economy is having a knock-on effect on the global PR and communications industry which has inspired new PR departments and agencies "focused on getting 'green' press releases to business journalists".

"Coverage of business aspects of the environment is relatively recent, but the dollars involved and the public’s interest in it speak loud and clear," said report co-author Andrew Leckey, director of the Reynolds Center.

Source: www.businessgreen.com